Time sharing as an index of automatization.

Bahrick, Harry P.; Shelly, Carolyn

doi:10.1037/h0043482

Cited by 70 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…If anticipating the high-probability events indeed requires processing capacity, then the addition of a secondary task should interfere with the anticipation, and consequently RT to highly predictable events should increase more than the less likely events. Earlier studies by Bahrick and Shelly (1958) and by Crowder (1967) found that a secondary task resulted in less interference rather than more in'terference with performance on predictable sequences than performance on random sequences. Crowder.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing demands of sequential information

Keele

Boies

1973

Memory & Cognition

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Three experiments examined the processing capacity required to use sequential information in a serial reaction time task with partially predictable sequences. The first two experiments varied the response stimulus interval (RSI) between o and 500 msec and found the relative advantage of the high-probability stimulus to be independent of the length of the RSI. The third experiment compared utilization of sequential information either with or without a secondary task. The secondary task did not affect the high-probability stimulus but did increase the amount of time required to respond to the low-probability events. The results are discussed in terms of the attentional demands of memory access.In most skilled tasks, events occurring at one point in time can be used to predict what is likely to occur later. When this information is used, performance is facilitated. Hershman and Hillix (1965) and Shaffer and Hardwick (1968), for example, showed that people type words, which are highly redundant, faster than random letters, even when only one letter of a word is exposed at a time. One letter in a word helps people predict what letter will occur next, reducing typing time if the anticipated letter does occur. More formally, Hyman (1953), Hyman and Umilta (1969), and Umilta and Trombini (1968) found that the time to process and respond to successive events depends on the information content of the events. When information is reduced by making some events more likely to occur following other events, reaction time (RT) decreases.The present study asks if processing capacity is required to use this type of sequential information. In the first two experiments, the time available for using sequential information is controlled by manipulating the time between the response to one stimulus and the onset of the next stimulus in a partially the next. In a third experiment, the time for processing sequential information is reduced not only by a short interval between the response and stimulus, but also by adding a secondary task to further compete for processing capacity.These experiments have general implications for theories of attention. Posner and Keele (1970) and Keele (1973) suggest that attention can be assessed by the degree of interference between tasks. Processes that do not interfere with other processes are said to require no attention. Thus, the overlap between anticipating a subsequent stimulus and processing the current stimulus will ten us whether or not anticipation requires attention. Posner and Boies (1971) used the interference technique to infer that nonspecific preparation generated by a warning signal is nonattentive. Here we ask whether or not anticipation of a specific event, which requires access to memory in order to determine what event is likely to occur next, requires attention. More generally, therefore, the present studies relate to the question of whether or not access to information stored in memory is an attention-demanding process. EXPERIMENT IThe basic task was a serial RT task with four li...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing demands of sequential information

Keele

Boies

1973

Memory & Cognition

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“…The Stroop task was dissociated under single-task and dual-task conditions (West, 1996). One of the characteristics of an automatic process is that it is little affected by a concurrent task (see, e.g., Bahrick & Shelly, 1958;Brown & Carr, 1989;Logan, 1979;Schneider & Fisk, 1982;Strayer & Kramer, 1990). To the degree that word reading is automatic, word reading should be unaffected by a concurrent task, whereas color naming ought to be affected because it is much less automatic.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process dissociation, cognitive architecture, and response time: Comments on Lindsay and Jacoby (1994).

Hillstrom¹,

Logan²

1997

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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), both of those assumptions were violated. It is argued that these violations were due to (a) an oversimplification of the processing architecture that ignores common stages such as guessing and response selection, (b) an assumption that the more automatic process (word reading) dominates over the intended process (color naming) in determining responses, and (c) an assumption that switching from the more common speeded response instruction (measuring speed) to a deadline response instruction (measuring, accuracy) does not change processing. General implications for applying process dissociation to dynamic tasks are discussed.Process dissociation is a method for determining how task accuracy is influenced by cognitive processes that are capable of either competing or working in conceit (Jacoby, 1991). It has been used primarily to show relative contributions of implicit and explicit memory in different tasks, but it has the potential to be used for other issues as well. Recently, Lindsay and Jacoby (1994) extended process dissociation to a visual identification task, the Stroop task, which appears to have underlying processes that sometimes compete and sometimes work in concert. The process dissociation method puts few explicit constraints on processing. But when we considered in detail how processing would be constrained by the assumptions of the method, the results are problematic, partly in ways addressed by earlier criticisms and partly in ways unique to the new domain. In particular, when one tries to reconcile this work with earlier work on understanding processing architecture of the Stroop task, three issues appear problematic: the assumption of processing independence, the side effects of applying deadlines to a dynamic process, and the characterization of automatic processing.

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“…Third, the dual-task and divided-attention conditions were compared to see if the difference between them diminished with practice. In many tasks, a reduction in dual-task interference with practice is characteristic of automaticity (Bahrick & Shelly, 1958;Logan, 1979).…”

Section: Automaticitymentioning

confidence: 99%

What is learned during automatization? The role of attention in constructing an instance.

Logan¹,

Etherton²

1994

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

170

219

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Seven experiments were conducted to examine the role of attention in automatization. Ss searched 2-word displays for members of a target category in divided-attention, focused-attention, and dual-task conditions. The main issue was whether attention conditions would affect what Ss learned about co-occurrences of the words in the displays. The attention hypothesis, derived from the instance theory of automaticity, predicts learning of co-occurrences in divided-attention and dual-task conditions in which Ss attend to both words but not in focused-attention conditions in which Ss only attend to 1 word. The data supported the attention hypothesis and therefore the instance theory. This article concerns what is learned during automatization. This is an important question in the automaticity literature, especially from the perspective of memory-based theories, such as the instance theory of automaticity (Logan, 1988,1990, 1992). Memory-based theories assume that automatic performance is based on retrieval of representations of past solutions from memory. What "gets into" those representations during learning and what is "taken out" of them during automatic performance are central questions in memory-based theories. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the answers offered by the instance theory of automaticity. The answers are important because they are derived from two of the three main assumptions of the theory: obligatory encoding and instance representation. The obligatory encoding assumption says that attention determines what gets into the representation. The instance representation assumption says that the representations in memory are instances-separate representations of cooccurrences. Attention determines what is in an instance; attention determines which co-occurrences are remembered. The experiments tested this hypothesis. What Is an Instance? The instance representation assumption consists of two related assumptions. The first is that each event is represented

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Time sharing as an index of automatization.

Cited by 70 publications

References 7 publications

Processing demands of sequential information

Processing demands of sequential information

Process dissociation, cognitive architecture, and response time: Comments on Lindsay and Jacoby (1994).

What is learned during automatization? The role of attention in constructing an instance.

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